OpenAI’s board of directors have announced that Sam Altman will step down as CEO and will be replaced by technology chief Mira Murati.
In a statement, the board of directors stressed that they “no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI.”
The company said it conducted “a deliberative review process” and “concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities.”
OpenAI’s board includes chief scientist Ilya Sutskever and independent directors like Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo, technology entrepreneur Tasha McCauley, and Helen Toner of the Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technology.
The board also said that Greg Brockman, OpenAI’s president, “will be stepping down as chairman of the board and will remain in his role at the company, reporting to the CEO.”
OpenAI, which counts Microsoft as a major investor, jumped into the mainstream late last year after releasing its AI chatbot ChatGPT to the public.
OpenAI was launched as a non-profit model in 2015 with backing from Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who reportedly committed $1 billion to the project.
Before taking over as CEO, Altman was president of startup accelerator Y Combinator and gained prominence in Silicon Valley as an early-stage investor. Earlier in his career, he started social networking company Loopt.
